The popularity of computer applications depends on many factors such as quality, timing, functionality, market demands, etc. Among these factors, the quality of a computer application is expected to be a large determinant factor influencing the popularity of the computer application. Particularly, a computer application may only represent one choice among many different computer applications in a crowded field. Users who have ready access to computing devices such as mobile devices can easily choose to stay with an existing computer application or switch from one computer application to another computer application until a satisfying computer application is found. Even for the same computer application, different releases may be of different qualities and thus produce different levels of satisfactions and popularities.
However, assessing the quality of computer applications is often difficult in a highly diverse, mobile environment where users can use many different types of devices and have many different choices of computer applications. As a result, many approaches of assessing the quality of computer applications require high costs, yet still produce only inaccurate, unreliable, repetitive, partial, anecdotal results.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Similarly, issues identified with respect to one or more approaches should not assume to have been recognized in any prior art on the basis of this section, unless otherwise indicated.